Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Introduction
Chapter I
Influential organizations in the development of the Civil Rights
Movement.
The NAACP started to fight injustices in 1910 with a case called the
Pink Franklin case. Though they failed in this case, the organization
resolved to continue to use the law and the law courts to fight prejudice.
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 4
principal of the school refused to admit her. After this incident, the
NAACP was eager to assist the Browns for it had long wanted to challenge
wide spread segregation in public schools. Soon after, other black parents
joined Brown, and in 1951, the U.S. District Court for the District of
Kansas heard Brown's case. At the trial, the NAACP argued that
segregated schools sent out the message to black children that they were
inferior to whites; and therefore, the schools were inherently and
institutionally unequal. After a long battle on May 17, 1954 (also known as
the "Black Monday") Chief Justice Earl Warren read the decision of the
unanimous Court:
“... We conclude that in the field of public education the
doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate
educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we
hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for
whom the actions have been brought are, by the reason of
the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal
protection of the laws guaranteed by the fourteenth
amendment (Cozzens, Brown2).”[2]
Johnson signed the voting rights act of 1965, which suspended poll taxes,
literacy tests and other voter tests and authorized federal supervision of
voter registration in states and individual voting districts where such tests
were being used. This was a significant victory for blacks on the road to
eventual total equality.
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 9
goal differed from that of the SCLC that worked to change national laws.
During the civil rights movement, tensions occasionally arose between
SCLC and SNCC because of their different methods.
1.3.2. Most important actions
Along with the other organizations such as SCLC, CORE, and NAACP, the
SNCC participated in many major actions that were beneficial to the civil
rights movement. Even though there was a strong opposition from whites
the SNCC was firm about getting what it wanted. Through sit-ins and the
freedom rides the organization changed the scene of this movement.
In 1961,after a gang of Ku Klux Klan members and other whites
attacked integrated groups of bus passengers who challenged local
segregation laws as part of the Freedom Rides, the SNCC, along with the
CORE organization, arranged to travel into the deep south forcing the
Kennedy administration to grant federal guard and in a this way the violent
reactions of the whites would be halted. During the spring and summer of
the same year, 436 people took part in these Freedom Rides.
The SNCC played a significant role in the 1963 March on
Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Thus, John Lewis the chairman of the
SNCC, in his speech, took the Kennedy administration to task for how little
it had done to protect Southern blacks and civil rights workers under attack
in the Deep South. He stated in his address that the Kennedy‟s bill “…will
not protect young children and old women from police dogs and fire hoses
when engaging in peaceful demonstrations… Listen Mr. Kennedy, the black
masses are on the march for jobs and for freedom, and we must say to the
politicians that there won't be a 'cooling-off period.”[7] Emphasizing the
SNCC‟s loyalty to the cause and so to the masses.
In 1961 SNCC began expanding its activities into other forms of
organization, most notably voter registration. Under the leadership of Bob
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 11
trying to subdue the black nation through violence and was first embraced
by an organization called The Nation of Islam or the NOI, which had a
chief role in the progress of the civil rights movement during the 1960s.
2.1.1. The historical background
The Nation of Islam is a black religious organization that was
launched in Detroit, Michigan, in 1930 by Wallace Fard. He argued that
African Americans could obtain success through discipline, racial pride,
knowledge of God, and physical separation from white society. Fard
disappeared in June 1934. Elijah Muhammad replaced Fard as a leader. The
former was born in Georgia, but later moved to Detroit, where he came into
contact with Fard through his wife Clara Muhammad and accepted his
teachings. During the Second World War Muhammad advised his
followers to avoid the draft. Thus, he was charged with violating the
Selective Service Act and was jailed between 1942 and 1946. After his
discharge from prison, Elijah Muhammad developed the membership of the
Black Muslims. He described African Americans as the chosen people and
encouraged the embracing of a religion based on the worship of Allah. In
the late 1950s a charismatic minister who became a spokesman for the
movement had emerged to be the most important figure after Muhammad
in the Nation of Islam; who was Malcolm X. Malcolm assisted in launching
several new mosques and was the founder and editor of Muhammad
Speaks, in which he became more extreme in his views. His belonging to
the organization had an end in March 1964 as Malcolm left the Black
Muslims and established his own religious organization, the Organization
of Afro-American Unity. After a pilgrimage to Mecca, he rejected his
previous separatist beliefs and advocated world brotherhood.
2.1.2. Mission and objectives
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 13
From its foundation the Nation of Islam set forth a layout defining its
duties and goals. Thus the aims of the organization were laid down in
Elijah Muhammad‟s The Supreme Wisdom. In which he stated that his
mission is “…to raise [his] people here (the so-called Negroes), and to
help them into the knowledge of Self, and their God Allah (who is in Person
among them) and the devils (their open enemies)…”[8] „their own
enemies‟, according to Muhammad was the white man, that‟s why he
rejected integration and called for black unity through the maintenance of
the black‟s education system, military organization, and economic
development program, under his leadership. In short the aim of this
organization in America was:
To teach the blacks the Truth.
To bring them face to face with God, and to teach them to know their
enemies.
To teach them that the black nation is the supreme nation.
To stress the idea that the devil is in person of whites.
To emphasize the self-defense strategy by “any means necessary”
against whites‟ prejudices as a legitimate one.
This organization, through its most important speaker Malcolm X, helped
in the rise of the most radical movement during the era of the Civil Rights
Movement. It was called the black power that emphasized black pride and
superiority and called for total separation between the two races. The
revelation of its philosophy was the development of an organization that
was called the Black Panther party.
2.2. The Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party is the only Black organization in the entire
black history that was armed and promoted a revolutionary agenda. It
represented the last great thrust by the masses of Black people for equality,
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 14
justice, and freedom. Its foundation was against the flood of resistance that
calls for nonviolence in the mid of the 60s.
2.2.1. The historical background
As the images of non-violent Black protestors and other civil rights
demonstrators being beaten and water-hosed by police, spat on, and jailed,
merely for protesting against social injustices flickered across America‟s
television screens young urban Blacks rejected nonviolence. It was against
this backdrop that the Black Panther party was founded on October 1966 in
Oakland, California, as a manifestation of the Huey P. Newton and Bobby
Seale's vision. The party was originally named the Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense. The “self-defense” term denotes the party‟s difference from
the strategies adopted by other civil rights organizations such as NAACP,
SCLC, and SNCC. The Black Panther Party (BPP) had four wishes:
equality in education, housing, employment and civil rights. This party
stated 10-point plan to get its desired goals.
Freedom: the power to determine the destiny of the Black and
oppressed communities.
Full Employment: give every person employment or guaranteed
income.
End to robbery of Black communities: the overdue debt of forty
acres and two mules as promised to ex-slaves during the reconstruction
period following the emancipation of slavery.
Decent housing fit for the shelter of human beings; the land should
be made into cooperatives so that the people can build.
Education for the people; that teaches the true history of Blacks and
their role in present day society.
Free health care; health facilities which will develop preventive
medical programs.
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 15
End to police brutality and murder of Black people and other people
of color and oppressed people.
End to all wars of aggression the various conflicts that exist stem
directly from the United States ruling circle.
Freedom for all political prisoners; trials by juries that represent our
peers.
Land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and
community control of modern industry.
2.2.2. Major actions of the Black Panther party
The Black Panther party endorsed both violent and smooth actions.
The violent ones were towards the enemy in the person of the white man
and the US government. However the smooth ones were aimed at the black
and poor people.
In 1967, the party organized a march in the California state capitol to
protest the state's attempt to outlaw carrying loaded weapons in public.
Participants in the march deliberately carried rifles. Though the party‟s
philosophy was new and different from Luther King‟s, it had expanded into
many cities throughout the United States, including Chicago, Los Angeles,
San Diego, Denver, Newark, New York City, and Baltimore by 1968.
In October 1967 the incident in which Huey Newton was shot,
arrested and charged with the murder of a white Oakland, California,
policeman, after a gun battle of sorts on the streets of West Oakland that
resulted in the death of police officer John Frey provided the spark that lit a
fire. On February 17, 1968, a large rally was held for Huey in the Oakland
Auditorium. The speakers included Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown,
and James Forman. After this event, membership grew rapidly. The
structure of the group became more defined.
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 16
References of chapter I
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAACP
[2]
http://www.doingoralhistory.org/project_archive/2002/papers/PDF/E_artz.
pdf
[3]http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761580653/southern_christian_lea
dership_conference.html
[4] J.Garrow, David. Bearing the cross: Martin Luther King and the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Country: press, years.
[5] http://www.sclcnational.org/
[6]
http://www.haitiwebs.com/forums/vbarticles.php?articleid=65&do=article
[7]
http://www.haitiwebs.com/forums/vbarticles.php?articleid=65&do=article
[8] http://www.muhamadspeaks.com
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 18
Chapter II
Influential leaders of the Civil Rights Movement
treating Negroes with the dignity and respect accorded other human beings
in the society.”[2] His speeches at that time were a call for justice. A call
for negroes to take a stand for their rights to ride Montgomery buses as
equal as whites. As he was obsessed with justice he proclaimed:
We are not wrong in what we are doing. If we are wrong,
then the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are
wrong the constitution of the United States is wrong. If we
are wrong God almighty is wrong. If we are wrong Jesus of
Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer and never came
down to earth. If we are wrong justice is a lie… And we are
determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until
justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty
stream. [3]
connoted with being an American citizen, with the same treatment and
regard as others without any reference of color. This meant blacks
beginning to see themselves not as Negroes but as human beings.
Conditionally, Dr. Martin Luther King told the Negroes that:
“We must have the spiritual audacity to assert our
somebodyness. We must no longer allow our physical
bondage to enslave our minds. He who feels that he is
nobody eventually becomes nobody. But he, who feels that
he is somebody, even though humiliated by external
servitude, achieves a sense of selfhood and dignity that
nothing in all the world can take away.”[6]
humanity. For King, the struggle needs a total commitment and self-
discipline from such leaders to be effective in the battle.
1.2.5. Non-violence
The shift of his primary focuses of thinking from justice to love;
generated King‟s philosophy of non-violence. First used and developed by
Mahatma Gandhi in achieving Independence for India and Pakistan, Kin
became strongly committed to this philosophy and he advised Negroes to
follow his way. He explained later that nonviolence is not passivity or
doing nothing, but rather it is a protest with peaceful ways. Arguing that
violence will not achieve freedom for negroes, but it will just get a whole
lot of them killed and also serve as an excuse for the whites not to do
anything about oppression.
“The reason I can‟t advocate violence is because violence
ultimately defeats itself, it ultimately destroys everybody.
The reason I can‟t follow the old eye-for-an-eye is that it
ends up leaving everybody blind.”[9]
His aim from this speech was to convince blacks to “meet hate with love”
or “physical force with soul force.”
2. Malcolm X
Between 1953 and 1965, while most black leaders worked in the
civil rights movement to integrate blacks into mainstream American life,
Malcolm X advocated independence. He was a gifted leader whose
perspective was defined by his uncompromising solidarity with the victims
of history. He was the counterpart of King in almost everything. King
promoted non-violent actions whereas Malcolm endorsed the ideology of
self-defense and declared in one of his speeches that nonviolence is the
“philosophy of the fool.”
2.1. The white men's image in the eyes of Malcolm X
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 23
Malcolm ceaselessly blamed the white men for the blacks' situation
in America. Thus his speeches were so angry in a way that revealed another
facet of struggle during the civil rights movement. As a leader who
mastered the rhetoric of violence, the black community at first, exclusively
heard Malcolm‟s addresses; this was between the year 1953 and 1959.
Later on, his speeches spread all over the country to cover both blacks and
whites. In his speeches, he showed extreme anger and hatred towards
America as a government and as a white community for tacitly legitimizing
racism.
2.1.1. Accusation of the white men to black audiences
Contrary to King, Malcolm addressed primarily the black
community. His speeches were focused on how vicious, greedy and
generally awful are the white men. Malcolm, almost in all of his speeches,
spoke out of the white man‟s conspiracy, in which the latter tried, over
centuries, to subdue blacks and deny them the right to have an honorable,
decent life. In addressing blacks, Malcolm felt that he had to tell them the
truth about the evil nature of the white man and convince them of their
superiority over the white man. But a problem faced Malcolm when do so
and that was the fact that the blacks were still under the influence of the
memories of slavery and the notions that this was the normal place for the
negro. Convincing them otherwise was a major obstacle for him.
view to a black listener. The white man did not have a place in his future
plan that is why he advocated, with great persistence, separation between
the two races as a solution to the dilemma. To fulfill his dream of
separation, he had to stress strongly the fact that the white man is the
enemy and the fight for dignity should be against him. He often referred to
whites with insulting names, such as “blue-eyed devils”, “two legged
snakes”, “international thugs and rapists” and “white apes and beasts” to
promulgate amongst the black population, resentment and hatred of the
white race.
2.1.2. Accusations of the white men to white audiences
King, among the white community; was getting the fame as the civil
rights leader whereas Malcolm was still virtually unknown in this
community. The occasion came in late 1959, when a TV show called
“Make Wallace Show” aired a documentary on the Black Nationalism
named “The Hate That Hate Produced”. This documentary represented a
great shock to white viewers, as it was the first time they got acquainted
with Malcolm X. His speech was not for the settling down the argument
but rather it was for the readiness to engagement. He declared his fury
saying that his anger is a result of white prejudices, unfairness, and racism.
Addressing a Boston University audience, Malcolm said “You should not
be angry with me if I raise my voice… when you see a man on a stove and
he yells, „ouch‟, why, he should be allowed, because he knows what it feels
like to suffer.”[11] Whites were shaken by his words; they often called him
racist and „anti-white‟ or a „teacher of hate‟ similar to the Ku Klux Klan.
As he was a brilliant speaker he responded righteously to such accusations
for a Playboy interview saying:
We are anti-evil, anti-oppression, and anti-lynching. You
can‟t be anti- those things unless you are also anti- the
oppressor and the lyncher. You can‟t be anti-slavery and
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 25
If there were any debates with Malcolm they were almost always
doomed to failure especially when debating the issue of integration. He was
so successful in debates that he was called the “giant killer”. Malcolm did
not get this name for nothing but from his skillfulness in making his
adversary question his own beliefs and ideas.
Malcolm further backed up his point of view by saying that “ this little
passive resistance or wait- until- you- change- your- mind- and –then- let-
me- up philosophy,” is a defeated one. It robs blacks of their self-esteem,
and humanity.
2.2.5. Separation
Malcolm considered the desire to integrate with the white man as
being indicative of an inherent self-hate. He encouraged the black
community to support the idea of separation from the whites and show
more love to their own race.
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 27
References of chapter II
[1] H.Cone, James. A dream or a nightmare. Place: name of press, year:
p61
[2] Ibid, p61
[3] Ibid, p62
[4] Ibid, p64
[5] Ibid, p66
[6] Ibid, p72
[7] Ibid, p72
[8] Ibid, p74
[9] Ibid, p78
[10] Ibid, p94
[11] Ibid, p100
[12] Ibid, p101
[13] Ibid, p105
[14] Ibid, p107
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 28
Chapter III
The Civil Rights Movement and the Black Arts Movement
This citation denotes Baraka‟s major theme adopted in his poems during
that era. His poem Black Art, from his volume Black Magic Poetry set
much of his ideologies:
We want “poems that kill.”
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland.
[…]
Black People understand
That they are the lovers and the sons
of lovers and warriors and sons
of warriors Are poems & Poets &
All the loveliness here in the world.
[…]
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 31
We want live
Words of the hip world live flesh &
Coursing blood. Hearts Brains
Souls splintering fire. [3]
Hatred was a major theme that pervaded Baraka's poems during the civil
rights movement. He continuously named the white man the devil and
condemned him for all the miseries in which the black nation was living.
One of these poems that denounces Baraka's hatred is Monday in B_Flat:
I can pray
all day
&God
Wont come
But if I call
911
The Devil
Be here
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 32
In a minute! [5]
Until the last line, the element of bravado in the diction and
rhythm has made the activities of the street people seem somehow
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 33
Conclusion
Works Cited
Books
J.Garrow, David. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King and the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Country: press, years.
H.Cone, James. A dream or a nightmare. Place: name of press, year
Sites web
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAACP
http://www.doingoralhistory.org/project_archive/2002/papers/PDF/E
_artz.pdf
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761580653/southern_christian
_leadership_conference. html
http://www.sclcnational.org/
http://www.haitiwebs.com/forums/vbarticles.php?articleid=65&do=a
rticle
http://www.muhamadspeaks.com
http://www.umich.edu/~eng499/documents/baraka1.html
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/barakablackart.html
Tharwa Ben Belgacem 36
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/baraka/onlinepoems.htm
l
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/foolingwithwords/mainlst_baraka.html
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/brooks/werealcool.html